7 September 1619 The three priestsTraja kňazi

In the autumn of 1619 the Transylvanian prince Gabriel Bethlen sent an army north and it took Košice; the troops were commanded by George Rákóczi. Three Catholic priests who had stayed in the town — Marek Križin, a Croat, Melichar Grodziecki, a Silesian, and Štefan Pongrácz, a Hungarian from Transylvania — were arrested, accused of treason, tortured and killed on 7 September 1619. They were beatified in 1905, and on 2 July 1995 Pope John Paul II canonised them in Košice itself, in front of a very large crowd. The episode is a hard one and should be told without softening on either side: this was a religious war in which both confessions killed, and the men who died here were killed for what they were, not for anything they had done.Na jeseň roku 1619 vyslal sedmohradské knieža Gabriel Betlen vojsko na sever a to obsadilo Košice; velil mu Juraj Rákoci. Traja katolícki kňazi, ktorí v meste zostali — Chorvát Marek Križin, Sliezan Melichar Grodziecki a Sedmohradčan Štefan Pongrác — boli zajatí, obvinení zo zrady, mučení a 7. septembra 1619 zabití. V roku 1905 boli blahorečení a 2. júla 1995 ich pápež Ján Pavol II. vyhlásil za svätých priamo v Košiciach, pred obrovským zástupom ľudí. Je to ťažká kapitola a netreba ju zjemňovať ani na jednu stranu: bola to náboženská vojna, v ktorej zabíjali obe konfesie, a títo muži zomreli za to, čím boli, nie za to, čo urobili.